


a little unsteady

by thecoilsofnikolatesla



Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout 3
Genre: Damn It Todd Love Jonas You Fiend, M/M, Other, Pre-Game(s), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 14:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12750261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecoilsofnikolatesla/pseuds/thecoilsofnikolatesla
Summary: The beginning of the duo that would only get on the Overseer Almodovar's nerves in the days to come - James Diaz, topside doctor and single father, and Jonas Palmer, resident sweetheart who only wants answers. But first they have to get past the uncertainty.





	a little unsteady

**Author's Note:**

> this was an old fic i found the beginning of and stayed up all night finishing and polishing. basically, i wanted to give jonas more story, james more material, and begin to set up the dynamic i see these two having. also i really just would appreciate it if they kissed so i made them be a lil tender.

James had still not adjusted to the life of a single father and it was showing. It didn't take a detective to figure it out - not that there was an Overseer-sanctioned detective running around the vault, as far as he knew, anyway. Who knew? Maybe there  _was_  one, stuck with nothing to do, much like him and Jonas, which would certainly explain why James had never seen them. Besides, Jonas saw more of him anyway, learning more about James through simple association than a private investigator would with all the searching in the world. Jonas was friendly and kind, and quick with a joke, and James would have been perfectly fine getting to know him if the man didn't know he was floundering at trying to raise a child on his own better than anyone else in the Vault.

He hid it well from others, made sure the Overseer saw him at peak capacity in the doctor's office, but Jonas had something more concrete: he knew. James was barely holding on. He looked at his child like they were the sunrise, with such excitement and joy in his eyes that he felt like his chest would burst sometimes with the love he felt for his baby. But anyone with a passing glance at James when the baby was asleep could tell that he was only pushing and trying for the baby's well-being. James was falling apart and no one in the Vault was more intimately aware of it than his co-worker. James considered himself a fairly private person; someone he knew so little being so aware of how much he was falling apart...

He sighed, dragging a hand down his face, berating himself for not watching - he looked at the petri dish in front of him blankly - what was he even watching? _You didn't used to be like this with your work_ , James scolded himself, remembering the unbridled enthusiasm and optimism he'd had when taking on Project Purity. But this was important, too, as the Overseer had said. The people of the Vault needed his hard work and dedication to improving their lives and... and... oh, _fuck it_ , Purity _meant_ something, something more real and good and meaningful than rotting away underground and slowly killing Stanley with aspirin.

_This is for your child_ , a voice that sounded oddly like Catherine's reminded him, gently. A quiet sigh escaped him and he sat back in his chair, shutting his eyes. It was all he could do now not to slump back and power nap through this depressive episode. Casting a quick look around the clinic, he checked to see if his co-worker was watching him with fascination (or worse, pity) as he slowly dashed his brain against his skull to complete madness. The man in question was looking through the office terminal and was paying no attention to James, thank god; Jonas was looking intently, as though he was searching the terminal for the key to life itself. Curiosity sparked briefly in James' brain before it was put out.

James settled back into his chair, embarrassment averted. As his heart settled back down he remembered the sad truth about the clinic: it was boring. This was the most excitement he got out of the day when the Overseer wasn't chewing him out and when he wasn't testing water samples against the Vault's water purifier. The only noise in the room was the distant noise of the diner radio and the soft  _tap-tap-tap_  of Jonas' pen against his desk.

"I need to go check on Seb," he said suddenly, standing quickly. The blood rush to the head he got for his efforts felt made him feel dizzy and weak but he stayed put.

"Go ahead, doc," Jonas replied without looking at him, green terminal light glinting off of his glasses.

"Be back," he muttered. The confirmation gave James the push he needed to trek out into the hallway in an undedicated half-jog to his room. It wasn't a long way (then again the grey halls blurred together after a while, and he was tired), and sooner than he expected he was crossing the threshold of his own corner of the Vault as the door slid back with a pneumatic hiss.

"You're back early!" Beatrice called as soon as he entered, hair swaying as her head turned, getting an eyeful of his haggard appearance in the doorway.

"Beatrice," he greeted.

"We've been missing you all day, haven't we?" she cooed at the bundle in her arms. James could see a little fist clenched tight in the swaddling and felt a smile push at his face.

"How's my trooper been, Beatrice? Hasn't gotten up to any schemes today?" James asked, stepping forward to look at his child. Seb regarded him curiously with wide green eyes.

She waved a hand dismissively. "Sebastian hasn't been a problem at all, such an angel." He didn't bother to correct her pronunciation. "I'm gonna gobble this one up - takes your good genes, you can see it in the hair. And from all the sleep this one gets!"

"Definitely takes after their father that way," James chuckled, taking his child delicately from Beatrice's arms and setting them against his chest, holding them close and pressing a kiss into the mess of curls laid on his shoulder. Seb fussed but settled into their father's arms. "Thank you for watching Seb, Beatrice, I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Oh, it's nothing, James," she said. Beatrice was a bit eccentric, to be sure, but James was sure her heart was in the right place, otherwise he would never have let her near his child. They probably could have been good friends in another world where they weren't stuck underground. "You're doing hard work for the Vault, so keeping an eye on the baby, doing a couple of readings for you - it's what I can do to help you back."

"Still, I appreciate it," he said. "Give us a bit?"

"Of course," she said. Beatrice made a vague, stuttery twirl to check and make sure she wasn't leaving anything of hers in the house, and after snatching up a couple of poetry books (the baby books she had brought that morning remained on the dresser, at which James smiled), she whisked out of the room as fast as she'd stepped in that morning.

James settled Seb into his arms again, cradling them so he could see their face. "Missed you, kiddo." Big green eyes blinked up at him - Catherine's bright eyes, no two ways about it - while they blew spit bubbles at him. He laughed a quiet chuckle that reverberated in his chest and bounced around in Seb's little ears while letting his legs carry them both to the bed. First he sat with his focus on his treasure, his last reason why, then he set them to lay down as they fell asleep, then curled around them as if he could keep them safe from everything down here.

His last thoughts before drifting into sleep were a vague wondering if he'd forgotten something.

 

* * *

 

Jonas was barely aware of the passage of time.

He'd read this log over and over again without any indication of any hints, any clue he had missed, any scrap of information that could have led him to the truth. _Anne Palmer remains one of the most physically conscious patients in this vault_ might as well have been burned into his retinas by now. The old 101 doctor's note-taking was absolutely boring to read, as most medical logs were, but something about this man's writing style screamed that he was a man who was enamored with the taste of dry, butterless toast. If memory served, Doc Alvarez was that exactly. His eye twitched and he furrowed his brow and shut his eyes, casting his glasses on the desk to rest his tired eyes in his hands for a bit. Jonas considered himself an easygoing man, and prided himself on his ability to be on even the Overseer's good side despite it all, but one factor jumped in that had thrown his usually calm nature into chaos.

To be fair, James couldn't have known, and his vast medical knowledge combined with a willingness to share had made Jonas act favorably around him. He didn't have anything against James, and in fact looked forward to their time together at the clinic when he wasn't lost in the thousand-mile stare, but James' presence had dug up an old question in his mind that Jonas had never laid to rest.

He never knew how his mother had died.

Reasonably, Nan didn't want to talk about it (and likely had been informed she _could_ not, _if_ she had been told how it happened at all, if Jonas' suspicions were correct) and asking Doc Alvarez why he didn't so much as have a body to cremate had only led to medical jargon that he'd known from the start was just several terms thrown together in an attempt to get a loud child to stop asking questions he shouldn't have. The Overseer at the time had been a kind man, and was more sympathetic to Jonas' plight than the other adults of 101, but only assured him that things would be made clear soon enough. Questions got him nowhere, and eventually, he had given up asking, burying the desire to know in the back of his mind where it wouldn't cause him any more trouble.

Overseers changed. Time went on. Jonas forgot about his questions and became more involved in what Nan Palmer called a lethal case of idealism while pursuing a medical education to fill the vacant shoes Doc Alvarez had left. Awkward questions about when he'd settle down with any of the lovely young women about the Vault fell on deaf ears as he found himself.

And then James showed up on Vault 101's doorstep, unsettling the tranquility he'd taken years to achieve.

Jonas blew a raspberry to the empty office and craned his head side to side. Overseer Almodovar wasn't going to give him any kind of answers and he sure as hell wasn't going to give him access to the files kept on all the residents since Vault-Tec had slapped civilization on the underside of a rock. For now, this was all he had, and it frustrated him to no end to be ramming against that rock repeatedly. Questions to James about anything even semantically related to anything topside had been strictly forbidden, not that he cared, but asking James subtle questions about the possibility of him knowing of vault dwellers in his time up there just made the man look tired. Being friendly only got Jonas so far, and he'd regretfully considered James a dead end until further notice.

Hell, but he needed to know, for his own sake more than hers. His mother was gone, he knew that - he just needed to know what had happened to her. Maybe it was to satisfy the demands of the child he'd been once but more realistically it was because he had the right to know, after growing up without her smile and guidance in some of the years when he needed it most. Jonas just wanted to close that chapter and then he'd go back to being unquestioning of the vault in sheltering him from the outside world. Maybe.

Jonas shut off the terminal and pushed his chair back. He wasn't getting anywhere poring over the same old file he'd been giving all his attention to for the last week. He put his feet on the desk in an attempt to relax and try to think of the information he'd been stuck on under a different light but soon put his feet back down and stood, looking around at the empty office.

_Wait, where's James - oh, right._ Jonas pursed his lips and looked at the clock before remembering he wasn't even sure when James had left to check up on his kid. It could easily have been well over half an hour since James hightailed it to his place. _Smart move, Palmer._

Jonas stepped out of the office, looking both ways down the hallway for any sign of the other doctor, but all he saw was Edwin Brotch too caught up in his students' papers to notice Jonas as he shuffled along. He mulled over the decision in his head for a moment before he stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind him. The suspicion that he knew where the doctor lived was confirmed when he saw baby toys in the window of one unit and the unrecognizable babies' recognizable parents weren't there with them. He reached out to knock but the door opened as soon as he got close enough.

"Doc?" he called. No response. Jonas stepped in reluctantly. A few toys lay on the couch, a few books on the dining table, but he didn't see James or his little tyke in the main room. They were either in the bedroom area or James had... picked up and bolted out of the vault, or something.

_If only_ , Jonas thought with a huff. _I'd have a chance at coming along._

The bedroom door hissed open and Jonas found James.

It was sickeningly sweet, the scene before him. An exhausted father still trying to hold and care for his child, even in their shared sleep. James' usually furrowed brow finally lay smooth as he snored softly. Little Seb had a grip on James' thumb that didn't look like it'd release anytime soon. James' forehead pressed into the side of Sebastián's head, their little head turned to face him. Jonas felt something soft and warm in his heart at the view. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Little Seb stirred at the noise.

"Shit," he muttered, reaching for the door controls and shutting out the light pouring in from the hallway. He could still see in the semi-darkness and he knelt by the bed, tracing his index finger up and down Seb's nose and forehead. Nan Palmer had sworn by it, and he wasn't a pediatric specialist, but he figured a grandmother's advice would work just fine instead.

"It's just me," he whispered while looking right into those big green eyes. Seb blinked sleepily and yawned, tightening their grip on James' thumb, before deciding that was good enough and nuzzling back into James. Jonas 1, babies 0. Take that, babies.

Jonas stood, carefully, slowly. Both father and child remained asleep as he crept back to the door, blissfully unaware of even his presence, and he sighed, fingers hovering over the door controls with his back to the wall as he looked at something that felt too holy for this time of day.

Maybe he and his mother had slept like this. He shut his eyes and turned back to the door, flipping the switch to open up, and lock it behind him.

"Jonas?"

He jumped, head jerking to make eye contact with James blinking owlishly at him in the dark. "I - shhhh, I just got the kid back asleep."

"Jonas," He whispered sleepily, trying to shake the fog from his eyes. "I - I'll get back up, I didn't realize -"

"No, no need, doc," Jonas replied. "You need - you need to be here."

The silence slipped back into the room between them but it wasn't sleepy this time.

"I'll just mark you off as having done your work, James," Jonas continued, breaking the silence almost as soon as it had formed. "Don't worry about the clinic, just - just worry about you and that baby of yours for now, okay? That kid needs their dad right now."

Another pause. "Thank you," James replied after a moment. "I know, I - I need to be here. Thank you for understanding." Jonas nodded, opening the door and stepping back into the main living area. The last thing he saw as the door slid shut was James pulling Seb closer in the dark, never looking away from them, and Jonas could have sworn he saw the ghost of a tear in James' eye glinting off of the light from the open door.


End file.
